Nerds vs. experts

At what point do you go from being a nerd to an expert? People tend to assume that PhDs are smart, but really they're just people who are obsessed with a specific thing like DNA or bees or brains. One of the researchers I work for is a chemist who's obsessed with cholesterol. You wouldn't think it, but if you're determined, you can find a lot of things about cholesterol to talk about. All you have to do is find a rapt audience in the form of an underpaid lab assistant. The other researcher I work for is obsessed with gall bladders. Mouse gall bladders, dog gall bladders, frozen gall bladders, gall bladder slides. If it's got "gall bladder" in the name, he's obsessed with it. Sub-obsessions include bile, livers, stomachs, and, surprisingly, flowers.

But what if you're a bit obsessive but don't have a fancy degree to show for it? Then you're just lumped into the nerd category along with Comic Book Guy, Trekkies, and Harry Potter fan fiction writers. Experts aren't necessarily smarter than nerds. They're just so obsessed with something that they're willing to devote years of their lives learning about that one, precious thing. And once they've achieved expert status, only their fellow experts can actually tell if they're smart or not. The rest of us just know that they're talking about cholesterol using words we've never heard before like 2-oxy-5-iso-acetic acid.

Since I'm obsessed with brains in a smart sense and in a dumb sense, I'm hoping I can help bridge the gap between nerds and experts. Once I'm through with grad school, I hope I'll be able to effortlessly switch between talking about how great that part with the helicopter was in 28 Weeks Later and then explain to anyone curious how the particular physiology of the zombie brain differs from the human brain and why head shots are necessary to kill a zombie. That'll surely prove to anyone listening that although all nerds aren't experts, all experts are definitely nerds.